Review: The Dirt on Ninth Grave

Author: Darynda Jones
Series: Charley Davidson, #9
Published: January 12th 2016
Publisher: Piatkus
Length: 352 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: Amazon

In a small village in New York lives Jane Doe, a girl with no memory of who she is or where she came from. So when she is working at a diner and slowly begins to realize she can see dead people, she's more than a little taken aback. Stranger still are the people entering her life. They seem to know things about her. Things they hide with lies and half-truths. Soon, she senses something far darker. A force that wants to cause her harm, she is sure of it. Her saving grace comes in the form of a new friend she feels she can confide in and the fry cook, a devastatingly handsome man whose smile is breathtaking and touch is scalding. He stays close, and she almost feels safe with him around.

But no one can outrun their past, and the more lies that swirl around her—even from her new and trusted friends—the more disoriented she becomes, until she is confronted by a man who claims to have been sent to kill her. Sent by the darkest force in the universe. A force that absolutely will not stop until she is dead. Thankfully, she has a Rottweiler. But that doesn't help in her quest to find her identity and recover what she's lost. That will take all her courage and a touch of the power she feels flowing like electricity through her veins. She almost feels sorry for him. The devil in blue jeans. The disarming fry cook who lies with every breath he takes. She will get to the bottom of what he knows if it kills her. Or him. Either way.

If there's one thing Darynda Jones knows better than pretty much everyone else, it's how to keep a series fresh and exciting through more pages than one can count. Charley Davidson never gets old (no, really, she's more or less immortal), she never gets tired (supernatural beinh, duh), and she never gets bored… or boring, for that matter. There are very few series I love more at this point and I don't see that changing any time soon.

We’ve reached a long awaited culmination in Eighth Grave after Dark and for only a second or two it was very difficult to see where things might go or how they could go on at all. As always, though, Darynda found the perfect solution by making a simple yet startlingly clever move and handling things elegantly while staying true to the series and herself. I’ve had more than a little faith in the woman ever since First Grave fell into my hands, but even I was surprised by how skillfully she handled things in this book.

At this point, it’s very difficult to say anything without revealing major spoilers, so I won’t even try. Suffice it to say that the series is just as good, just as exciting as it’s been at the very beginning. Ninth Grave itself, though, stands out due to the overwhelming sense of community and family, the strong connections we get to see between Charley and her friends in the most trying times they’ve ever faced.

Two more books are certainly ahead of us (and hopefully even more), and I’m very curious to see how things will turn out for Charley and the gang. We’ve had some hints along the way and some very ominous signs, but I have no doubt that Darynda will find a way to give Charley her much deserved happily ever after, and even more importantly, a way for Reyes to finally have some peace.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher for review purposes. No considerations, monetary or otherwise, have influenced the opinions expressed in this review.